Manufacturing Innovation. Building a strong, modern, globally competitive manufacturing sector is critical to expanding America’s economic prowess in the 21st century. If America is to remain a global manufacturing leader, investments in science and engineering research and workforce development must remain at the forefront of the national public policy agenda. https://ppec.asme.org/key-issues/manufacturing-innovation-competitiveness/

America’s advanced industries: New trends. Leaders in cities, metropolitan areas, and states across the country continue to seek ways to reenergize the American economy in a way that works better for more people. To support those efforts, this report provides an update on the changing momentum and geography of America’s advanced industries sector—a group of 50 R&D- and STEM (science-technology-engineering-mathematics)-worker intensive industries the vitality of which will be essential for supporting any broadly shared prosperity in U.S. regions. https://www.brookings.edu/research/americas-advanced-industries-new-trends/#_ednref8

A recent study by the W.E. Upjohn Institute found the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Program generates a substantial economic and financial return of nearly 9:1 for the $130 million annually invested by the federal government. A PDF of the report, the executive summary , the one page summary and the appendix are available to view and download.

The question of what an intelligent U.S. manufacturing strategy should entail is central to the future of the U.S. economy, so getting it right is critical. The Trump administration has a real opportunity to do that by ignoring both supercilious criticism and tired laissez-faire thinking, but it also runs the risk of overreacting and thereby making things worse, not better. Therefore, to help guide the new administration’s manufacturing policy efforts, this briefing paper first unpacks four key policy debates on manufacturing (why jobs were lost; why jobs went offshore; what’s the right amount of manufacturing for America; and whether manufacturing can return) and shows how the conventional economics position that the media reflectively recycles is wrong on each of them. The paper then presents 10 strategic principles that should guide the administration’s efforts to restore U.S. manufacturing. Download

The New England Council and Deloitte released a new report, “Advanced to Advantageous: The Case for New England’s Manufacturing Revolution,” that dispels the notion that manufacturing is declining in the region, assesses the region’s strengths and advantages, identifies future opportunities for collaboration and investment in advanced manufacturing, and provides a roadmap for increased economic growth and global competitiveness. READ THE REPORT. READ or THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.

Manufacturing is all over the news these days, as President Trump has made revitalizing the sector and bringing back its jobs a centerpiece of his administration’s agenda. But there is little agreement among experts about what happened to U.S. manufacturing in the last two decades, much less what is likely to happen in the near future. Many economists and pundits claim that the 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs lost since 2000 vanished primarily because of automation, so there is nothing that can be done to bring them back. However, a growing minority of analysts attribute a significant share of the losses to increased trade pressure and dwindling U.S. competitiveness, which suggest that the nation could reclaim manufacturing jobs with the right policies. Download Report.

A conference convened by Indiana University outlined an aggressive agenda for the incoming president to support the crucial manufacturing sector. Keynote speakers noted the importance of manufacturing to the national economy: It supports 12 percent of GDP directly and nearly one-third indirectly through its connections to production of natural resources, transportation, finance, and wholesale and retail trade; the sector offers above-average wages and benefits to its workers; it performs over 75 percent of research and development (R&D) and is a source of around one-half of all patents in the United States; it is a major source of productivity growth and innovation; and it provides meaningful jobs and careers for both college educated and less-than college educated skilled workers. Download Report.

Manufacturing has declined dramatically — as a direct employer of American workers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 12.3 million Americans had payroll jobs in manufacturing in June. That’s down about 30,000 from June 2015, off nearly 1.9 million from June 2006, and down 4.9 million from 1996. In the past 20 years, in other words, America has shed 28 percent of its manufacturing jobs. In good times and bad, in recession and expansion, the manufacturing sector employs fewer people. It’s impossible to dismiss or talk around this trend. But the decline of employment isn’t the whole story. Not by a long shot. In fact, in many significant ways, U.S. manufacturing is thriving. The point of manufacturing is to make stuff that people and companies will buy and use, not to employ people to make stuff. And by the former measure, U.S. manufacturing is actually doing quite well. Download.

Smart manufacturing is rapidly transforming the global competitive landscape by marrying industrial automation with information technology (IT) to optimize the efficiency, productivity, and output of plants and supply networks. This trend will continue to increase the flexibility of plants, reduce the use of energy, improve environmental sustainability, lower the cost of products, and deliver additional benefits such as better product quality and increased worker safety. Download.

We analyze the effect of rising Chinese import competition between 1990 and 2007 on US local labor markets, exploiting cross-market variation in import exposure stemming from initial differences in industry specialization and instrumenting for US imports using changes in Chinese imports by other high-income countries. Rising imports cause higher unemployment, lower labor force participation, and reduced wages in local labor markets that house import-competing manufacturing industries. In our main specification, import competition explains one-quarter of the contemporaneous aggregate decline in US manufacturing employment. Transfer benefits payments for unemployment, disability, retirement, and healthcare also rise sharply in more trade-exposed labor markets. Download.

The United States and many European countries have experienced growing income inequality and increasing employment polarization (i.e., concentration of employment in the highest and lowest paid occupations) over the past several decades. The two most prominent potential causes for these “effects’’ are rapid technological change (e.g., the computer revolution) and expanding international trade (e.g., the rise of China). There is also a growing sense that trade and technology are a unified force affecting labor markets. Economists have posited that job tasks that are suitable for automation may also be suitable for offshoring. However, not all work processes are equally susceptible to trade and technology. Many labor-intensive tasks that have proved challenging to automate can nevertheless be readily performed overseas. Consequently, substantial pieces of production chains have already moved to the developing world. But there are many labor-intensive tasks, such as janitorial services and package delivery that must be performed in person or in close proximity to customers, and hence are not readily susceptible to international trade. Thus, for example, while short order cooks at restaurants face little competitive threat from overseas workers, it is now commonplace for grocery stores to carry prepared meals that are cooked and packaged overseas. Download

The development of the US manufacturing sector over the last half-century displays two striking and somewhat contradictory features: 1) the growth of real output in the US manufacturing sector, measured by real value added, has equaled or exceeded that of total GDP, keeping the manufacturing share of the economy constant in price-adjusted terms; and 2) there is a long-standing decline in the share of total employment attributable to manufacturing. These trends, go back several decades. Their persistence seems inconsistent with stories of a recent or sudden crisis in the US manufacturing sector. After all, as recently as 2010, the United States had the world’s largest manufacturing sector measured by its valued-added and, while it has now been surpassed by China, the United States remains a very large manufacturer.Download

Conservative estimates indicate that meeting key technical needs would save over $100 billion annually in emerging advanced manufacturing sectors in the US. Barriers to innovation increase the cost of advanced manufacturing R&D, weaken private investment incentives, foster proprietary standards that can further distort the market and magnify the role of public research institutions. Important linkages across technical needs mean that closing select technical gaps -while leaving other needs unmet -would fail to allow domestic manufacturers to fully realize economic impact. Manufacturing research consortia and technology extension services are needed to meet critical technical needs and ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises benefit from advanced manufacturing technology. Download

This joint research shines a light on manufacturing strategy, management practices and investment priorities over the next five years and beyond. While U.S. manufacturing employment has declined over the past 25 years, the future outlook is bright. Taken alone, the U.S. manufacturing sector would be the ninth-largest economy in the world, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. As our research found, manufacturing leaders are overwhelmingly positive about their business growth prospects. Nine out of ten expect revenues to grow, and more than half expect revenues to grow 5% or more per year over the next five years. The top challenges to meeting these strong growth expectations are market volatility, rising material costs, price reduction pressures and increasing labor costs. To thwart such threats, according to our research, manufacturers are pushing hard to improve performance across a range of capabilities, starting with improving production processes, strengthening customer relationships and finding people with the right skills and experience. Download

The U.S. manufacturing sector has turned a corner. For the first time in over 10 years, output and employment are growing steadily. Manufacturing output has grown 38 percent since the end of the recession, and the sector accounts for 19 percent of the rise in real gross domestic product (GDP) since then. Through May, the sector has added 646,000 jobs, and manufacturers are actively recruiting to fill another 243,000 positions. Download

Advanced manufacturing drives long-term economic prosperity and growth, and supports the missions of the Federal agencies participating in the NSTC Subcommittee for Advanced Manufacturing (SAM). A foundation of priority technology areas is needed to secure U.S. competitiveness in this sector, from which collaborations between government, industry, and academia may be built. This document captures technology areas in advanced manufacturing that are current priorities for the Federal Government, and are strong candidates for focused Federal investment and public-private collaboration. Emerging technology areas include advanced materials manufacturing, engineering biology to advance biomanufacturing, biomanufacturing for regenerative medicine, advanced bioproducts manufacturing, and continuous manufacturing of pharmaceuticals. In addition, the Federal Government has already announced a number of advanced manufacturing technology areas that are either the focus of substantial existing investments or that may be the subject of future programming. These existing technology areas similarly require support across the development pipeline to fully leverage current research and development investments and infrastructure. Finally, Federal education and workforce training programs for manufacturing, which encourage strong industry involvement to ensure that today’s curricula meet tomorrow’s workforce needs, are highlighted. Download

The hottest topics in the primary election campaign have been the offshoring of jobs and whether to support the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. The Reshoring Initiative’s 2015 Reshoring Report shows that rapid job loss has been stemmed, but there are still huge challenges to bringing back the 3-4 million manufacturing jobs previously lost to offshore. The report contains data on U.S. reshoring and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) by companies that have returned or added new U.S. production from offshore. The report includes cumulative data from 2007 through 2015, as well as detailed data for 2015. Download

Clean energy technologies are expanding rapidly and growing in significance with respect to contributing to the world’s energy systems. The manufacture of these technologies—including extracting and processing raw materials, producing required subcomponents, and assembling end product—has become a global enterprise. Download

Reshoring balanced offshoring in 2015. The report contains data on U.S. reshoring and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) by companies that have returned or added new U.S. production from offshore. The report includes cumulative data from 2007 through 2015, as well as detailed data for 2015. https://reshorenow.org/march-29-2016/

MForesight is a think-and-do tank focusing on the next generation technologies that will strengthen U.S. manufacturing. MForesight provides crucial ideas and insights to business and government decision-makers on emerging technology trends and opportunities for public-private investments in advanced manufacturing. MForesight also seeks to promote technology innovation to bridge the gap between basic science and manufacturers. https://mforesight.org/download-reports/.

Making Value for America: Embracing the Future of Manufacturing, Technology and Work. This report looks at how globalization, developments in technology, and new business models have transforming the way products and services are conceived, designed, made, and distributed. The report highlights the transformation in manufacturing from making things to making value. Manufacturing can no longer be considered separate from the value creation system of research and development, product design, software development and integration, and lifecycle support. Companies now create value with a combination of manufacturing, software and services.

The National Science Board (NSB, Board) today released a new policy brief on the public and private benefits of the nation’s higher education institutions. “Gainful employment and better lifelong earnings are extraordinarily important and getting a college degree is a key way of doing that,” said Kelvin Droegemeier, NSB Vice Chair and Vice President for Research at the University of Oklahoma. “But that’s only one part of what our higher education system does. By educating individuals, it helps prepare the workforce the United States needs today and in the future. By conducting the bulk of the fundamental research in this country, our colleges and universities play a foundational role in the innovation ecosystem by producing research that fuels new industries and our economy. Our colleges and universities do so much more than offer credentials to people.”

America's Advanced Industries, The need for economic renewal in the United States remains urgent. Years of disappointing job growth and stagnant incomes for the majority of workers have left the nation shaken and frustrated. at the same time, astonishing new technologies—ranging from advanced robotics and “3-dprinting” to the “digitization of everything”—are provoking genuine excitement even as they make it hard to see where things are going. Tthis report provides a wide-angle overview of the advanced industry sector that reviews its role in american prosperity, assesses key trends, and maps its metropolitan and global competitive standing before outlining high-level strategies to enhance that. https://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2015/02/03-advanced-industries#/M10420

Manufacturing and Innovation, The report outlines key short- and long-term measures executives identified as critical to revitalizing and sustaining the US industrial base, a key driver of prosperity and economic strength. Executives consistently noted success hinges on the ability of the public and private sectors to work together and engage in open, honest, ongoing, productive dialogue about creating an environment in the United States that promotes competitive R&D work and advanced manufacturing. In particular, industry executives expressed the need for greater access to R&D work conducted at national labs and better engagement mechanisms with government-run research institutions. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/manufacturing/us-indprod-deloitte-and-council-on-competitiveness-advanced-tech-report.pdf